Sex

What Do Sex and Gender have to do with Net Neutrality and Climate Change?

Garry Knight Climate March in London September 21, 2014 Flickr/creative commons

Garry Knight
Climate March in London
September 21, 2014
Flickr/creative commons

I have often been asked why VenusPlusX, and its mission to help bring about to the coming New Age of Sexual Freedom, has been so concerned in the last couple of years with the two issues of Climate Change and Net Neutrality. Some of my friends asked me to explain what these issues have to do sex, after all.

Dan and I set out to help change the world. Maybe you did or will, also. Each of us can envision a better future world, free from racism, poverty, and militarism and the constant interference by the overreach of governments and religious hierarchies and the greedy exploitation by corporate elitists. We chose the New Age of Sexual Freedom to connote that lofty goal, the day when respect for personal autonomy and bodily integrity will at last realized. That future we are co-envisioning is real: what is old and useless will be gone; what was old but useful will persist because it has value; and, new and humane ways of doing things emerge to replace all of the inhumane and coercive systems that enslave all of us but a few.

The work of rescuing civilization from those who would corrupt it proceeds by setting priorities. A long time ago, I appealed to my fellow social and economic justice activists to reserve at lease some of their time to advocate for a strong worldwide response to climate change. But will that be enough?

Climate change deniers like to call themselves climate change skeptics to make you think they are capable of absorbing new information when they have made themselves mentally unable to do that. These annoying deniers are trying to get in the way of taking immediate and historic action. The number of deniers in power to interfere may be high or low but that doesn’t change the fact that the effects of climate change are already upon us, and the urgency is increasing expodentially.

The ravages of climate change and our ability through a free and open Internet to respond to this crisis, are inexorably linked. Climate change is not just threatening our very existence, the very ground on which you now stand, it is rising quickly with some dramatic outcomes (mass migrations, violent weather, rising sea levels and salinization destroying water sources, etc.). When will these outcomes get the attention of those  going through each day blissfully unaware of this world emergency? When will these outcomes directly affect you and your family? Or have they already?

Improvement in all other areas of social and economic justice will depend on our success in responding to climate change, starting with fostering new ways of getting energy without using fossil fuels. In short, we need the Internet to accomplish everything.

You can see more about Net Neutrality and Climate Change, here and here. Also, here is a good summary of the issues, just out today.

BREAKING: According to tonight’s Wall Street Journal, the Federal Trade Commission that protects and regulates utilities like the Internet seem poised to do the right thing. We may be able to celebrate a huge victory after fighting so hard for Net Neutrality.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to fundamentally change the way it oversees high-speed Internet service, proposing to regulate it as a public utility.

Chairman Tom Wheeler is reaching for a significant expansion of the agency’s authority to regulate broadband providers, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The move would fully embrace the principle known as net neutrality, and if enacted, would bring a new definition to the economics of the Internet industry: Rather than regulating broadband firms lightly, as has been its practice so far, the FCC would treat them like telecommunications companies and subject them to more intrusive regulation, especially in areas relating to how they manage traffic on their networks.

A central element would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment, these people say. Supporters of the FCC’s position say allowing some websites to pay for faster access to consumers would put startups and smaller companies at a disadvantage.

The proposal, expected to be unveiled by the FCC on Thursday, is a victory for a host of Silicon Valley firms and liberal activists who have championed it. Many of these companies lobbied the White House seeking such an outcome, and were rewarded in November when President Barack Obama announced his support for “the strongest possible” rules for net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

If we have the Internet and the ability to communicate rapidly across all sectors in the world, we will have a fighting chance in meeting the tremendous security challenges presented by climate change, and change the world in the process.

 

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Park your formulaic sex at the door

Like a lot of people, I took note a couple of weeks ago when Cosmo, Cosmopolitan Magazine, the fun girl’s bible, ran a story with pictures laying out 28 Mind-blowing Lesbian Sex Positions.

Flicker/creative commons

Flicker/creative commons

The modern Cosmo was the brainchild of its brilliant editor and author Helen Gurly Brown in 1965, who started dialogs on topics unheard of in print at the time, skillfully merging sexuality with a commercially available mainstream magazine. Long considered a sexual freedom advocate, she told women they could “have it all.”

With this article on lesbian sex, and few others on gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects during the last year or so, Cosmo can be commended for branching out and acknowledging lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, appearing to be more inclusive while trying to tap into that lucrative market they’ve ignored for decades. They are trying even while acknowledging that many or most feminists and lesbians have shunned Cosmo, put off by so much editorial about how the average woman, once objectified, can make herself sassy and attractive to their male partner/s.

While wondering if any lesbians were consulted in the making of that article I came across some criticism by real lesbians who posit that this entire concept seemed to have been the product of frat boys based on their porn fantasies (pretty much the style of most of the magazine’s stories). That may well be true but I think it was overreach — when making fun of the positions, these critics called them “stupid” saying they were either undoable or useless, dismissing them entirely.

It was impossible to hold up one’s own body weight, let alone the body weight of the other person in half of them. We had to balance on our tip toes and contort our bodies in the most insane ways. And, most importantly, there was nothing arousing about any of it.

What I think is being missed here by all parties is that touching bodies in unusual or unexpected ways can be rewarding, bringing you to heights you might at first have overlooked. It seems that, once liberated from the constraints of men, feminists and lesbians have gradually become more like men in how they approach satisfying their own desires.

We have sex. We fuck. We use our fingers and our bodies and our mouths and our toys and we get ourselves and each other off. Just like straight people do. There’s stimulation and penetration and vibration. There’s licking and sucking and smacking and grabbing. 

Instead of exploring erotic encounters that expose oneself to unexpected delights found all over the body, not rushing so much and staying curious to couple all parts of the body in surprising ways, men, and now it seems many straight women and lesbians, tend to recreate a slalom with specific goals to be met at every turn, usually in a certain order to get to their orgasm in as straight a line as possible.

But that is so, so boring.

Even the critics include a paragraph with two contradicting statements, aptly portraying the push and pull between anxiety about reaching the goal of orgasm and the desire for sex to be more than just that.

But there is not, I repeat, there is not anyone rubbing foreheads on each others’ belly buttons or rubbing bottoms against anyone’s sternum, not in the name of having an orgasm any way. By making sex all about an orgasm we miss the erotic excitation of our minds as well as our bodies.

Sex is an erotic encounter that stimulates physical, psychological, and, some agree, spiritual growth. If you focus less on scoring the goal you will play a more artful and nuanced game that is rewarded of surprises and new stimulation.

Slow down, set aside your usual formula for a week and see what happens.

 

The Sexual History of America

US-GreatSeal-Obverse600px

First, consider the mottoes and symbols of our nation, but meditate upon their true meaning.

E Pluribus Unum—from many, one—unity without uniformity

Annuit Coeptis—he approves our undertaking—divine providence is assured

Novus Ordo Seclorum—a new order of the ages—we’re here to change the world

What is this all about? Are these empty classical boasts, or do they hold genuine meaning for understanding our national purpose?

The study of the history of sacred sexuality in “western culture” in turn shows how these ideals, ideas, and practices date from ancient, if not prehistorical times, progressively converging to the present day when we are at last able to begin to openly celebrate sexual freedom in all its manifestations.

The common basis of association that brought together the “founding fathers” was actually a system of rational thought that had existed for centuries in secret groups, which finally emerged in Western Europe, triggered the Enlightenment, and inspired the deistic but non-sectarian approach that was able to unite thirteen colonies into one nation. The label publicly attached to this world view was “Rosicrucian.” If any labeled tradition can be said to lie at the foundation of our nation, it is Rosicrucian.

Rosicrucianism involves many things beyond such ideals, but the single, central core of the system has always been the sacred employment of sex and eroticism in the service of individual moral growth and spiritual perfection. And this dynamic, too, is being reborn today in evolution of American society.

For more, see one of our presentations, first delivered in 2011, Dawn of the New Age.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

 

Women Like Sex (a lot)

 

Photo of central panel of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights by Will Flicker/creative commons

Photo of central panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights by Will
Flicker/creative commons

“Women like sex. Stop making ‘health’ excuses for why we use birth control”

—  Jessica Valenti, author, Guardian columnist, and founder of Feministing.com (@JessicaValenti)

Once again, Valenti has focused her laser-sharp analysis to challenge popular arguments on behalf of free access to reproductive health. She urges everyone to stop saying that birth control is necessary for the small percentage of women who use it for medical health reasons, and deal with the reality that 99% of women use birth control, mostly because they like sex, and shouldn’t have to make excuses for it.

It’s amazing that in 2014 conservatives (men mostly but some of their womenfolk too) are pressing the idea that any sex beyond purposeful reproductive sex is dirty, bad, and slutty. A recent study in the Journal of Sexual Behavior, highlighted today at Think Progress, exposes the underlying conservative myths that drive bad outcomes, such as the US Supreme Court’s devastating Hobby Lobby decision last month.

First, if women don’t have “paternity certainty,” they will not know who they need to rely on to support them and their future child, a notion from last century that disqualifies women as masters of their own destiny.

Second, conservatives believe that the very availability of birth control leads to promiscuity, a notion completely dispelled by actual research. Women are no more likely to have multiple partners with free access to birth control.

It’s important to recognize that the fear of women’s promiscuity in many countries causes their murders, and activism to stop this behavior should be of paramount importance. In the US, these conservative theocrats just want to curtail women by keeping alive the idea that women are meant to home and in their place, wholly dependent on men.

Women like sex (a lot) just as much as men do is a fact that modern society must deal with in order to progress out of the 1800s by embracing this reality and the forever changed moral landscape.

It’s interesting to go further back into our history to understand the true genesis of these ideas, as we did a few years ago, and ask the question: When will men, women, and everyone in between, recognize they are enslaved by women-hating ideas and instead embrace true liberation through the wholehearted the embrace of erotic freedom?

To answer this question we start by making the distinction between anarchy, a legitimate and proven approach to governmental organization, and terrorism, a deliberate technique of chaotic social disorganization. We’re not talking about anarchism which is by its nature is chaotic and destructive. Anarchy is something different, used to connote simply a world comprised of humane and entirely voluntary associations without the need for interference by governments, religious hierarchies, and corporations.

A chief tool of hierarchical governmental violence directed against its citizens is sexual repression through false religions, failed ideas of government, and corrupt concepts of commerce. Every aspect of organized human endeavor is corrupted at its origin by the universal practice of sexual and erotic repression, worthless superstition reinforced by ignorance and compelled by violence.

In From Why Privileged Elites Cynically Oppose Erotic Freedom we pointed out that erotophobia is real, a deeply seated, invisible but all-pervading, blind, screaming, and insanely raging fear to embrace the one thing in your material life that can actually save you from meaninglessness and give power and value to your life experience.

Erotic engagement is the first real step from the purely material-physical-sensory into the domain of spirit. The joy one experiences is indeed a gift from the cosmic source that leads us onward to higher levels of inspiration. By denying the legitimacy of this first step on the “highway to heaven” the historic oppressors of society would make it virtually impossible for most people to ever engage the path of love and truth, the path of light, their own personal pursuit of happiness, which is unacceptable to the oppressors because it this is the only true path to personal and societal freedom which necessarily dilutes the power of the elite. By trapping humanity in such darkness, religions, governments, and commerce have conspired to destroy all human hope of progress by harnessing human effort for the advantage of a greedy few.

Thus we see that erotic freedom, the foundation of all freedoms, is also the most direct entry for modern humans to the pathways of love, truth, goodness, and beauty. Free love, pan-eroticism, and collective social reversion—the continuing experience of comprehensive personal joy, apart from social and economic duty—are keys to human activity celebrating truth, the active gift of love. And this unity of experience eventuates in the emergence of the brotherhood of all people, and leads to the kind of social network that eventually stabilizes the most desirable form of anarchy.

 

Erotic experience is the simplest inspiration of awareness of transcendent love that erases all conscious objection. Personal and shared erotic experience demands trust and rejects violence. Anarchy requires that there exist no need for government violence against citizens. The balance required for successful and stable anarchy can only be maintained when society is pervaded by the atmosphere of mutual love and trust between all people.

So the question remains: When will men, women, and everyone in between, recognize they are enslaved by women-hating ideas and instead embrace true liberation through the wholehearted the embrace of erotic freedom? 

Another for Independence Day: Sexual Freedom is the Bedrock of All Freedoms

Another special for Independence Day 2014, we are representing one of our key issue posts that explains why sexual freedom is the underpinning of all of other freedoms. Please let us know what you think, and for more see A Manifesto for A New Age of Sexual Freedom and Transhuman Erotic Freedom.

Why Sexual Freedom is the Bedrock of All Freedoms was originally published on July 17, 2011.

(También en Español)

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Our sexual pleasure response is completely individual. When we feel it, those precious moments, we experience unbridled exhilaration that is at the same time indescribable by mere words, even in great art or poetry.

There is only one way to replicate this experience of unrestrained freedom and that is to recreate — re-create increasing favorable circumstances to plug in at a healthy pace. Although sexual pleasure exists by definition in a time and space all one’s own an imperative to share it and enhance it with others is built in. Studies have demonstrated over and over again the irrefutable benefits to mental health, prosperity, and longevity of a life regularly punctuated with the desired number and rate of pleasurable encounters. This inviting pressure brings people into relationship, the midwife of personal growth.

These cumulative states of sexual pleasure, those knowings of  at-one-ment in the universe, can be mutually acknowledged as both a singular experience and the bodily guarantee of true pluralism. It is the one authentic human experience that virtually all other humans agree exists, and no other experience comes close to this criteria. Pluralism leads inevitably to democracy and the extension to more and more people their birthright to pursue sexual freedom and all other freedoms that emanate from this mutual acknowledgement of each other’s immutable bodily freedom in the form of sexual pleasure.

Our own sovereign portal to experience physical pleasure and love in infinitely inexhaustible manifestations makes possible a mutuality of individual autonomy that is expressed as true pluralism and the quest for universal equal rights for each person without qualification. Everyone shares that inner experience of freedom to the same extent everyone else does and is why civilizations progress in making all freedoms universally felt in society.

This inner experience of sexual pleasure is what joins together each and every person on earth, an organic unity all of us can recognize and agree is important, even a type of magic, that makes our world better day by day.

Party on.

National Sex Study reveals what we are up to

National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior

Strand Book Store by Nick Sherman (flickr/creativecommons

Strand Book Store
by Nick Sherman
(flickr/creativecommons

A new study, the largest in 20 years, represents a clarion call for anyone having sex (or not having sex for that matter). Researchers from the Center for Sexual Health Promotion (CSHP) at Indiana University’s School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation examine the sexual experience and condom-use in almost 6000 people, ages 14-94.

“These data about sexual behaviors and condom use in contemporary America are critically needed by medical and public health professionals who are on the front lines addressing issues such as HIV, sexually transmissible infections, and unintended pregnancy.” (CSHP Director, Michael Reece)

Here are a few things that caught our attention, but it is definitely worth a fair read because you will learn a lot and, more important, it allows you to analyze your own behaviors.

[T]he study helps both the public and professionals to understand how condom use patterns vary across these varying stages in people’s relationships and across ages, adding that “findings show that condoms are used twice as often with casual sexual partners as with relationship partners, a trend that is consistent for both men and women across age groups that span 50 years.” (CSHP Associate Director, Debby Herbenick)

Condom use is of course up to 1 in 4 sexual encounters, although for single people it is 1 in 3, and people of color in America use condoms more than their white counterparts. That may sound like good news except that that means as many as 66-75% are having unprotected sex. 

Adults using a condom for intercourse were just as likely to rate the sexual extent positively in terms of arousal, pleasure and orgasm than when having intercourse without one.

Click here to see Condom Use Graph

Sexual behaviors, from solo and partner masturbation and oral sex to vaginal and anal intercourse. Males masturbate alone more than females, not surprising. But there is near gender equity during our 40s, with males at 76% and females at 65%.

Females are having very little anal penetration, 4-5% before age 18, jumping to 18% by age 20, and then stays around 22% until age 40 and then dropping drastically after that.

Males performing oral sex on females gets into the double digits, 18%, by age 16, and steadily rises to its peak at 74% for ages 25-29, and then slowly declines after that.

Females performing oral sex on males is predictably is substantially greater but males do actually reciprocate in greater numbers only in our 30s.

Click here to see Sexual Behavior Graph

The data continues to show that adolescents are actually having less sex than previous studies (that focused only on teens) have suggested.

Photo of Roman Lesbian Statue by Rob Meredith (flickr/creativecommons

Photo of Roman Lesbian Statue by Rob Meredith (flickr/creativecommons

The study confirms that beyond the stats of sexual orientation in men and women, the numbers of American’s having had same-gender sex at some point in their lives is “higher.”

And, oh yes, the study confirms that males report the incidence of their female partners’ frequency of orgasm at 85% while females say it’s only 64%.

You can download the study’s full report by going to the National Sex Study website.

The Erotic Vitalizes Life

Here is another excerpt from our upcoming book, The Unseen Journey (working title), all about the connection between the erotic and spirituality. A first step is to start you thinking analytically about sex, reproduction, and the erotic senses so you can understand their distinct differences. We are still editing the final manuscript so all comments are welcomed.

Flickr Creative Commons

Flickr
Creative Commons

Sex is most definitely not about penis-vagina copulation, although that is the one expression of sex everyone learns about and most people will practice, thinking that there are no alternatives. In fact, penis-vagina copulation is not really about sex at all—it is about reproduction. It seems that evolution has assured reproduction by embedding the supporting organs and activities within the vital erotic functions of the human pelvic systems. But it is mistaken to believe that the reproductive function is the only factor dictating the emergence of compelling erotic satisfaction.

In reality, the erotic senses are where the story should properly begin. All universe creatures are endowed with erotic senses; however, only physical biohosts actually reproduce. The erotic senses are essential to vitalizing life in all forms, whether any reproductive capability exists at all. And there are a great many possible and gratifying forms of erotic stimulation (individual or group) that provide no pathway to reproduction and are vitally valuable in and of themselves when properly understood and employed. 

Considered are all levels of the erotic senses, not just ecstatic orgasm, but all happiness and all pleasure. That warm feeling you get when someone lays that hand upon your arm or back to comfort you or to show admiration and friendship is pleasure from the very same senses.
© VenusPlusX, 2013. All rights reserved.

Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

The Sexual Freedom Project: Birds and the Bees

I’ve decided to offer my take on some of the media I have come across here. There are hundreds of Sexual Freedom Project videos to choose from, each with an important message. Everyone’s invited to join the cast by submitting your personal definition of or commentary on some aspect of sexual freedom.

In this video, the speaker Ying details her upbringing, and the sex education that she received in Catholic school, telling us of the limited issues that were addressed when it came to the realities of sex.

She and I share the idea that abstinence-only education creates sexual frustration. Not only that, numerous studies back up the correlation between lack of sex ed and high numbers of unwanted teenage pregnancy (in the American South in particular). Attempting to shut down the natural desire for sex is not healthy, and is considered by some a stealthy form of child abuse whenever and wherever accurate and complete sexual health information is intentionally withheld, or sometimes replaced with outright disinformation.

Ying even speaks of her parents’ relationship in which they avoided sex before marriage, detailing how this repression did no favors for their level of intimacy.

What was your sexual education like? Send us a video or essay detailing your story for a free VenusPlusX t-shirt.

More videos here

The Sexual Freedom Project: You Need To Explore

As someone new to VenusPlusX, I’m offering my thoughts on some of the media I have seen here so far, wondering if new readers relate to my views.

In this video, Scheyla raises an important point — exploration. In a world where some are eager to pass judgment on others (sometimes for political gain) regarding sexual preference, it remains important for people to explore and discover sexuality for themselves. It is our responsibility as individuals to pursue our own forms of happiness, ignoring false judgments that may come from others.  Be your own judge, and seize sexual freedom for yourself.

What do you think?

Is Scheyla right about exploration?

Should the government be involved at all in legislating matters pertaining to sex?

Send us a video or essay expressing your thoughts for a free VenusPlusX t-shirt.

More videos here

Giulio Prisco discusses Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance (Part 2)

Giulio Prisco

Giulio Prisco

This is the second installment about Giulio Prisco’s upcoming book entitled, tentatively, Tales of The Turing Church. A draft of his chapter, “Sex and the Art of Cosmic Governance,” that includes recollections of his many interactions with VenusPlusX Co-founder Dan Massey.  Part 1 included an excerpt from Dan’s talk at the Transvision conference where we met Giulio for the first time, and Part 3 recollects Dan’s remarks from one of his interactions with the Mormon Transhumanist Association in 2012.

Giulio is a physicist and computer scientist, and former senior manager in the European space administration. Giulio works as a consultant and contributes to several science and technology magazines. In 2002-2008 he served on the Board of Directors of Humanity Plus, of which he was Executive Director, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association.  He is often in Hungary, Italy and Spain.
You can find more about Giulio at Turing Church and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).  

***********

 In a letter following Dan’s talk at TransvisionDan wrote . . .

“When Martine [Rothblatt] suggested I submit a paper, I knew very little about Transhumanism beyond the superficial elements (live forever, upload your mind, freeze your DNA, etc.). My paper was a total shot-in-the-dark to present to some Transhumanists viewpoints I had previously shared with Martine that were related to sex and gender freedom. I had not thought of these ideas being related to Transhumanism until she suggested it.

I scrubbed all references to GOD and/or DEITY from the talk, because I knew that a significant part of the audience were self declared ‘atheists’ who would have been very distracted by these words, even though I am not sure they understood what they did not believe in. Therefore, even though these words might connote useful concepts to me, they did not mean the same thing to the audience, many of whom suffered from overexposure to the extremely bad public relations of nominally Judaeo-Christian cults for the past 4000 years. There was no need to wade into that quagmire.”

At the conference and after, I had frequent opportunities to discuss religions, mythologies and cosmologies with Dan, among many other things. He was a frequent participant in online discussions hosted by my Turing Church group, Martine Rothblatt’s Terasem, and the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Dan wasn’t a Mormon or a sympathizer, if anything he was very strongly critical of some aspects of Mormon society, in particular their attitude to LGBT persons, but he appreciated the progressive scientific theology promoted by Mormon transhumanists.

In one of my fondest memories with Dan, one day in Manhattan after a Singularity Summit, we realized that my religion of technology and his religion of love are really one and the same, in a relation analogous to the particle-wave complementarity of quantum physics. An electron appears sometimes as a particle, other times as a wave, which seem not only different but incompatible things. But how the electron appears in a specific case doesn’t reflect the intrinsic nature of the electron (which is neither one nor the other) but the configuration of the experiment – in other words, the question that we have chosen to ask. Similarly, technological transcendence and universal love are apparently different but complementary aspects of our shared religion.

Dan used to drop intriguing hints about a “Cosmic Government” – a confraternity of natural Gods and advanced galactic civilizations. Perhaps we will join the Cosmic Government when the time is right, and perhaps the Cosmic Government is benevolently interested in in our world here and now, and may give some help now and then. Dan explained his ideas in more detail in a letter:

“I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of a religion that would sustain Transhumanist ideals without introducing irrational or mythic ideas. When I finally got around to reading Martine [Rothblatt]’s Truths of Terasem I was surprised to see that the concepts she had assembled at the outset, as she set out to define Terasem, were nearly congruent with a concept I had come to know quite well in a totally different setting, specifically, The Urantia Book. In fact, she was going quite a bit further, trying to anticipate what it would be like for Terasem to be actual.

You see, my decision to take up the cause of sex and gender freedom stems directly from some 30 years of very deep involvement with this nearly occult text and the small group of people who take it seriously. Since the book is 2100 pages, about 1.2 million words, I cannot expect people to have or want to read it, although I think it is well worth reading, even if you don’t take it seriously. Sex and gender freedom are not directly addressed in the book. Rather, from the book one takes certain approaches to very open minded but very rational thinking about all manner of subjects, all more or less explained in terms of what educated middle-class Americans in the 1930s would understand. Since I had long cared about sex and gender issues, it was natural that at some time I would become active in actually applying the ideas and ideals I had adapted/adopted from my familiarity with the book.

For example, the comprehensive structure of our activism program is intended to put spiritual pressure on society for change toward higher ideals and superior social practices. We think the most rapid progress can be made when development proceeds synchronously across the dimensions of value – truth, beauty, goodness, and love – corresponding generally to intellectual, physical, motivational, and personal realizations. This approach to structuring activity is based on concepts from the book, though not specified there. Because of what we have learned from the book about the structure of reality, we are confident that, by examining the four basic values, we will get a reasonably comprehensive view of all the issues and connections. At the same time, you will see us trying to subtly teach readers these same ideas, so you will find these themes used repeatedly in our writings.

To explain further, this four dimensional world of ideals comes from The Urantia Book, in which it is said to be the foundation upon which we, as individual persons, are participating in the development of the Supreme Being, an incompletely realized deity of finite space and time, which even now shapes events (I often use the term force of destiny) to assure its final emergence. At this occasion, the ‘finality,’ all persons will have become elements of a complete cosmic consciousness. But long before this final event many ordinary people will have learned to participate in an integrated, orderly life, in which everything and everyone work together better if you give them a chance.

So, when I suggested that a reasonable rational Transreligion fit for genuine Transhumans would be open to acknowledging and working with a cosmic government, I was basically thinking some of us already are, so to speak. That is, we are actively dedicated to the realization of values in answer to common ideals that are what we sincerely imagine a cosmic government would care about. And by so doing, our combined effort to realize supreme values makes our society better and makes us participants in and contributors to the final emergence of the fully integrated Supreme Being.

I kept hinting (or more) at the idea of accepting or even theoretically admitting the possibility of some sort of intervention as a component of a Transreligion framework. The Urantia Book itself claims to be one such intervention, and, if you accept its statements that we are actually living in a universe populated by diverse, non-hostile beings, some like ourselves and some vastly superior in physical, mental, or motivational endowments, the possibility of some intervention cannot be discarded for want of confirming evidence. The book specifically describes four previous interventions, several of which, according to the book, did not go well for the people of this planet and have led to many of our current problems of uniting to solve major social problems. I believe we are currently in the middle of an intervention on an extensive, planet-wide scale that is gradually becoming apparent.

What sort of vision can illuminate the path to a meaningful and worthwhile future? It must recognize the potential of humans to become ‘as gods.’ The Terasem notion of a technodeity, constructed through human action and culminating at ‘the end of time,’ or some other definite but undefined occasion in the future, with the power to reach back through time and across space to force the actions that finally lead to its full emergence, constructed from the collective consciousness of all universe creatures, is certainly a good start. This provides a vision that we shall all then become fully functioning personalities of a supreme, finite deity.”

I find Dan’s vision of the supreme consciousness, God, emerging from the community of advanced forms of life and civilizations in the universe, able to influence space-time events anywhere, anytime, perhaps even here and now, very beautiful and illuminating. I think this is what all great religions really said, in the form and language of their times, and new religions try to say in the language of our times. But what does this cosmic vision have to do with social activism, LGBT issues, and sexual love? Dan continues:

“I demand that society place no limitation on the individual or collective exploration of joy and pleasure, which necessarily begins with the liberation of Transhumankind from the universal social oppression of long denied sex and gender freedom. To me it seems reasonable to recognize the Transgender as Transhuman; to me Transhuman is the great umbrella under which all who embrace in their own lives and persons the exploration of transformed physical bodies, human minds, and personal superconsciousnesses may be welcome.

I see the framework as an enabling structure for the elaboration of more specific and overtly religious practices that work for different communities. It basically reminds us of our common will to shape the world, regardless of our specific approach, and thus can accommodate erotic mystics (like myself) at one extreme and cyronic speculators at the other.

Obviously, the suggested requirements framework is reaching far beyond the material aspects of current Transhumanism. Specifically, to me, it is the transmaterial aspects that are far more important to the overall future of Transhumans and their destined leadership of planetary society into a new age that answers the longings of the past with a result that is unclogged by myth and chaotic group thinking, is better than anyone could have expected, and opens the doors to achievement of destiny on physical, intellectual, motivational, and personal levels as well.”

The religion of love includes both Agape, the spiritual and ethereal aspect of love, and Eros, the physical and passionate one. Some people are more inclined to one or the other, but Eros and Agape, like love and science, are complementary aspects of one and the same thing. Western religions exclude erotic mysticism and limit individual or collective exploration of joy and pleasure, but other religions are much more open. The supreme consciousness at the end of space and time encourages thousands, billions, uncountable transfinities of flowers to bloom – new religious practices based on the erotic mysticism of Eros may play an important role in our progress to join the cosmic community of Gods.

For more, see Part 1  and Part 3.